Today, email may be used as a general tool for broad collaboration. Email has led to an explosion of messaging in which many people are copied/respond and use this mechanism to e.g., communicate, and share content. However, the mechanisms that we have to send, receive and process email and content therein do not lend themselves to collaboration.
For example, the explosion of messaging has resulted in situations where codependent technologies represent an obstacle to effective collaboration. Specifically, the association of a link in an email with document libraries, team rooms, or content within databases is a very powerful capability that allows an email recipient to select a link that in turn brings them to a central repository that stores the information referenced. This, in turn, keeps email messages short and concise, thus reducing duplication and unnecessary propagation of content.
Unfortunately, circumstances often arise in which an email recipient may not have access to the content being referenced, as the associated access to the repository limits access to a restricted group that may exclude some members of the recipient list. This often creates manual process challenges that involve coming to terms with the databases owner, seeking access, granting access and returning to the email once again when access has been granted to reference the content in question, thus creating displacement and discontinuity for the recipient.